Inherit the wind
Man’s free will is not imprisoned, but with his wanton and reckless behavior, he will get nothing.
There was such a backward "monkey trial" in the United States in the 1920s?
In 1925, Tennessee, the United States, promulgated a law on Darwin's theory of evolution, prohibiting public school teachers from teaching the theory that humans evolved from lower animals in their classrooms. In the southern region of the United States, which is very conservative and has traditional religious beliefs, such a bill has undoubtedly been recognized by most people. Although some scientists jointly wrote to protest, a series of anti-evolutionary legislative movements reached a climax when the bill took effect.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) protested this threat to academic freedom and found a young biology teacher named Scopes who had taught evolution in a middle school classroom, and instructed him to voluntarily admit that he violated the ban, hoping to challenge it through trial." The legality of "God’s Act". As a result, the then American politician Bryan and the lawyer Calellan Staro stood on the opposite sides of fanatical Christians and scientific progress, and conducted a court debate on this sensitive subject. Due to the celebrity effect and the catalysis of the media, the "monkey trial" has become a hot topic in the United States. The two-week trial has attracted thousands of people and journalists. First-hand interviews and photos from the courts occupy a huge page in American newspapers. Whether it is a gimmick or the pursuit of justice, the "monkey trial" has had a profound impact.
The Great Debate of the Century in the 1960s
Directed by Stanley Kramer, the film inherit the wind adapted from the real case "Monkey Trial" was released in the United States in 1960. Today, when the color of the image impacts the vision, it is hard to imagine how a black-and-white film without the exquisite pictures would be presented. The conflict between religion and science.
The story takes place in the southern United States, and the people believe in God. "Challenge to God" attracted politicians to personally end their passionate debates and incited believers into religious fanatics. In this conservative town, Scopes, a biology teacher who has the courage to pursue science, has become a target of public criticism. On the other hand, the famous lawyer argued for the jury to join the scholars, disputed that the ban violated the Federal Constitution, applied to join the scientist witness to appear in court, and explained the biblical story and the theory of evolution that are not inconsistent. After these proposals were rejected by the judges one by one, the lawyer asked Brian, a prosecutor and politician who praised the Bible to explain everything, as an expert. The politician Brian could not explain clearly the parts of the Bible that did not conform to the laws of nature. Therefore, the parts of the theory of evolution that did not conflict with the biblical story should also be recognized by the believers. However, the debate between high-energy lawyers and politicians throughout the film did not change the jury's decision. The judge finally fined the biology teacher Scopes a hundred dollars.
The Scopes case was hurriedly ended, but the winning politician collapsed dramatically at the end of the film. I don't know whether the faith was subverted by the atheists or because he simply couldn't face the scientific progress he knew.
The main scene of the film is a small court that can accommodate a hundred people. The prosecution and defense are sweating to defend their beliefs. In the hot temperature, everyone has to succumb to the laws of nature. However, religion is over-emphasized in the film. The emotional fragments make people ignore that what lawyers are defending is the constitutional freedom of academic speech, not religious stubbornness. Extreme beliefs separate friends and family, and believers believe that the price of entering heaven is emotional coldness. Blind worshipers of the faith judge the boy who has fallen into the water as a heretic who is not blessed by God. People use their indifference to outline an extreme God. The politician Brian's adherence to the Bible made him blindly reject any heterogeneity that interfered with beliefs, and denied the innocent teachers who stood in line with the theory of evolution, and lost the ability to think deeply in the extreme prejudice. When the lawyer asked sharp questions about the Bible he championed, Bryan's spiritual world was challenged. Although he won the case, he also had to experience the pain of the collapse of his beliefs. Whether or not to fully accept Darwin's theory of evolution is not important. People should pay more attention to how to deal with the relationship between independent thought and belief. At the end of the film, defense lawyer Calerens Daro holds a Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species at the same time. He believes that he is a person who has faith and has rational judgments about the progress of science. "Human will is the real miracle, fanaticism and ignorance cannot stop human thinking."
In fact, the series of events that occurred after the "Monkey Trial" was not put on the screen by the director. In the 20th century, the religion-dominated American society was broken by technological development. The Scopes case brought public opinion, but the victory of the bill represented the supremacy of the Bible. The theory of evolution played a useless role in textbooks. The real science was regarded as superstition from books. The information that misleads the public is widely disseminated as a gimmick by the media, which brings fear to the ignorant and brings weapons to the eager for quick success. In the thirty years since the bill was promulgated, more than half of American teachers dared not disclose their recognition of the theory of evolution. The content of the theory of evolution in the textbooks was revised. The evolutionary education of American high school students was sluggish until many years later, the development of science and technology gained the society. This secular accusation was only relieved after approval.
In a modern society where human will is relatively free, religion's restraint on science has transformed into moral restraint on science and technology. In the fast-developing future of science and technology, will humans who advocate rationality and freedom be blinded by overconfidence? Do we need to usher in a new century debate at that time?
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